Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has given the green light for a second time to a $5.5 billion pipeline expansion that has attracted strong opposition from environmentalists and some indigenous groups.

Trudeau, an ardent supporter of green energy, has found himself defending the 620-mile Trans Mountain pipeline expansion since his government first approved it in 2016. The project is meant to bring petroleum from oil sands near Edmonton, Alberta, to tanks in Burnaby near Vancouver on Canada’s Pacific Coast.

Last year, opponents won a suit in Canada’s Federal Court of Appeals to temporarily halt the expansion, but Trudeau’s government subsequently purchased the existing 715-mile pipeline from the Canadian division of Kinder Morgan Energy Partners LP for about $3.5 billion in an effort to move the project ahead.

At Tuesday’s news conference in Ottawa announcing that the project was back on, Trudeau justified the move by saying the money reaped from the pipeline would be channeled back into green projects.

“We need to create wealth today so we can invest in the future,” he said. “We need resources to invest in Canadians so they can take advantage of the opportunities generated by a rapidly changing economy, here at home and around the world.”

Trudeau said the pipeline would deliver oil to the Pacific Coast for shipment to Asia, reducing Canada’s dependency on selling its petroleum to the United States.

Green Party Leader Elizabeth May was quoted by the CBC as calling Trudeau’s promise to funnel profits from pipeline into clean energy technology a “cynical bait-and-switch that would fool no one.”

“If you’re serious about fighting climate change, you invest public funds in renewable energy,” May said. “And there’s no guarantee that this pipeline will ever turn a profit anyway.”

The majority of First Nations communities have signed off on the expansion, but some still oppose it.

The expansion is designed to move nearly a million barrels of oil each day — triple the flow from the existing pipeline. That is expected also to significantly boost tanker traffic on Canada’s Pacific Coast from just 60 vessels a year to more than 400, according to The Associated Press.

However, opponents of the Trans Mountain expansion warn that the risks of spills will rise dramatically.

Trudeau said he expects “shovels will be in the ground” this year.

Let’s block ads! (Why?)

The storied magazine Sports Illustrated and its website have a new publisher.

The 65-year-old magazine’s editorial content will be controlled by a digital outfit called Maven, in a deal announced Monday. Ross Levinsohn, the controversial former publisher of the Los Angeles Times, has been named CEO.

It comes just three weeks after Sports Illustrated was bought for $110 million by a brand and marketing firm called Authentic Brands Group. As part of that deal, its previous owner Meredith Corp. would have had editorial control for up to two years. Instead, Authentic Brands now has a deal with Maven.

A Seattle-based media company, Maven was founded by James Heckman, who previously worked at Fox and Yahoo. Heckman and Levinsohn, who was also an executive at Fox and Yahoo, have long been professionally intertwined.

They plan to rename the organization Sports Illustrated Media and expand the brand internationally in partnership with Authentic Brands.

Though the organization didn’t provide an editorial vision, the deal raises questions about the editorial future of Sports Illustrated. The business practices of Levinsohn and Heckman were the subject of an earlier NPR investigation.

As publisher of the Los Angeles Times and an investor in a digital outfit called True/Slant, Levinsohn embraced a strategy he termed “gravitas with scale” — a model that was based on unpaid contributors and meant job losses for the traditional newsroom journalists in The Tribune publishing chain.

Levinsohn was sued twice as an executive, and was accused of fostering a workplace environment that was conducive to sexual harassment, NPR has previously reported. His corporate employers settled both lawsuits against him and his co-defendants for undisclosed sums.

Maven paid $45 million against future royalties of Sports Illustrated, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing. Under the terms, Authentic Brands will pay Maven a share of revenues, and a 10-year licensing agreement that can be renewed for a total of 100 years.

Monday’s sale is just the latest media acquisition for Maven. As recently as last week, it bought financial news site TheStreet for $16.5 million.

The first issue of Sports Illustrated hit newsstands in 1954. The magazine, which focused its coverage on sports also featured deep dives in the arenas of civil and human rights, politics, power and money through the lens of sport.

NPR’s David Folkenflik contributed to this report.

Let’s block ads! (Why?)

Boeing Chief Executive Officer Dennis Muilenburg says the company should have been more transparent with regulators and the public when Boeing discovered a safety light was not operating as designed.

Muilenburg made the comments to reporters ahead of the Paris Air Show, Boeing spokesman Gordon Johndroe told NPR.

“We clearly fell short in the implementation of the AOA disagree alert and we clearly should have communicated better with our regulators and the airlines,” Johndroe said in an interview by phone from Paris.

Boeing’s 737 MAX plane has been grounded worldwide since the second of two crashes that together killed 346 people. In both the Lion Air flight in October 2018 and the Ethiopian Airlines flight in March 2019, pilots struggled to overcome a software program known as MCAS that drove the noses of the planes down. Now Boeing is working on a software update that will enable pilots to more easily control their aircraft.

The fatal crashes and the ongoing grounding of its fastest-selling plane have cast a shadow over Boeing’s appearance at the Paris Air Show, which runs June 17-23.

“The company’s presence and activities at the show will demonstrate its commitment to innovation, industry partnerships and safety,” Boeing announced.

Both American Airlines and Southwest Airlines have extended 737 MAX flight cancellations through early September. Previously, both airlines had planned to resume flights in August. American says about 115 flights will be canceled daily, and Southwest says about 100 flights will be removed from its daily schedule.

In his comments, Muilenburg referred to a safety feature connected to the sensors that feed into the MCAS software. The software would trigger when the plane was flying at an angle that might make a stall likely. Boeing designed a warning light to alert pilots when the two “angle of attack” sensors disagreed, which could mean MCAS would be triggered incorrectly.

The light was supposed to be standard on all versions of the MAX; however, in practice, it only worked on planes with other safety features that airlines bought for extra cost.

NPR’s Laurel Wamsley has reported that Boeing knew the AOA disagree alert malfunctioned before the Lion Air crash.

Muilenburg conceded that engineers learned in 2017 that the alert light did not work as intended, and he said he was “disappointed” Boeing did not work to make the information more public, The Wall Street Journal reports.

Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Lynn Lunsford told NPR his office is working with Boeing throughout the testing of the software enhancement.

“We have not set a date for the certification flight,” Lunsford wrote in an email.

Aviation expert Richard Aboulafia of the Teal Group said Muilenburg’s comments appeared to reflect a change in tone.

“It’s been a tradeoff. Do you limit the short-term damage from liability cases, or do you focus instead on protecting the long-term brand equity of product and company, and they’ve been favoring the first option,” he said. “That to me is a big mistake which seems to be changing.”

Speaking from Paris, Aboulafia told NPR Muilenburg’s comments had captured attention of the air show attendees.

“Standing around in cocktail parties, I think that is something people are remarking on.”

Let’s block ads! (Why?)

For the second time in recent years, auto workers at a Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tenn., have narrowly voted against forming a union.

It was the difference of 57 votes.

Preliminary results show that over three days of voting, 776 workers backed the union, but 833 voted it down.

The outcome is seen as the latest blow against organized labor in the South, where union advocates have tried for years to strengthen representation in auto facilities amid a shrinking union membership base and fierce opposition from many top lawmakers in the region.

A slim 51% majority of the some 1,600 ballots cast shot it down. The last time United Auto Workers held a vote to organize the Chattanooga factory, in 2014, roughly 53% of workers rejected the proposal.

To Volkswagen officials, the latest union defeat shows that anti-union sentiment remains strong among factory workers.

“Our employees have spoken,” said Frank Fischer, president and CEO of Volkswagen Chattanooga.

Volkswagen has officially been neutral in both this month’s vote and the one in 2014.

Fischer said the National Labor Relations Board still has to certify the results, which will then be subject to legal review.

“Volkswagen will respect the decision of the majority,” Fischer said in a statement to NPR.

A union victory at the Chattanooga factory would have delivered UAW its first fully-unionized foreign-owned auto plant in the South.

Following the earlier failed attempt to form a union, a smaller group of maintenance workers voted to unionize, but Volkswagen would not bargain with them unless all hourly workers had a chance to vote. That set the stage for this vote.

Labor experts in Tennessee, where resistance to unions runs deep, noted the particularly forceful opposition among state Republican leaders to the Chattanooga plant organizing this time around.

At one point, Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee made a visit to the site to address workers before the vote.

“When I have a direct relationship with you, the worker, and you’re working for me, that is when the environment works the best,” Lee told workers, according to a leaked recording of his conversation.

The visit took some observers aback.

“It’s not unusual for governors and U.S. Senators to vociferously oppose unions in private companies,” Daniel Cornfield, a labor expert at Vanderbilt University, told NPR. “What is unusual is this governor went inside the plant and directly talked to the workers.”

The governor’s visit and the onslaught of ad campaigns around the vote added to debates on the shop floor that may still be lingering after the vote.

Christopher Bitton, a worker at the Chattanooga plant who opposed the union, said the lead up to the vote exposed divisions among the workers, and he does not expect those tensions to dissipate.

“There has been a clear division between pro and anti on the floor,” Bitton told NPR member station WPLN. “And after this is over with, I don’t know whether or not this is going to clear up.”

Union officials accused the Volkswagen officials of interfering with the vote through “legal games,” saying workers faced threats and intimidation and a “campaign of misinformation” ahead of the vote.

Workers at the Chattanooga plant typically start out getting paid $15.50 per hour. Just months before the union vote, the company announced pay increases for production team members. While that is a strong wage compared to median earnings in Chattanooga, it is below what unionized auto workers are paid.

Volkswagen has union representation at all of its other major plants around the globe, but none of its factories in the South have factory-wide unions.

Cornfield, the Vanderbilt labor expert, said pro-labor activists could see some silver lining in the slim vote tally.

“This is not a landslide victory for the anti-union forces,” he said.

Let’s block ads! (Why?)

White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow said Thursday that the Trump administration is determined to make China play by the rules of international trade.

“You know how you get from here to there?” Kudlow told an audience at a pro-trade think tank in Washington. “You kick some butt.”

That’s not the kind of dry, technocratic language one usually associates with trade negotiations. But it’s another example of how President Trump has turned international commerce into a highly unusual spectator sport.

The next big spectacle is expected to be a faceoff between Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the G-20 summit in Osaka, Japan, later this month.

This “Talka in Osaka” is another high-stakes showcase for the president, who has managed to turn trade talks into must-see television. Less WTO — more WWE, complete with heroes, villains, plot twists and plenty of trash talk.

“China wants to make a deal very badly,” Trump told reporters this week. “It’s me, right now, that’s holding up the deal.”

Trump said that before he took office, “China ate the United States alive, economically.” The president has imposed steep tariffs on Chinese imports. And he’s threatened to go further if China won’t throw in the towel.

Like last week’s tariff battle with Mexico, the showdown with China has kept the president on the front page, sent shock waves through the stock market, and turned dusty rules of international commerce into a hot topic around the dinner table.

“There will be no shortage of conversations in the early summer barbecues, boy, with people looking at their portfolios,” said Matthew Slaughter, a Dartmouth economist who studies international trade.

Trump has not only put trade front and center in the national conversation. Because the president is such a polarizing figure, he has managed to scramble the usual partisan cheering sections. Some Republicans are now defending tariffs and other protectionist measures while some Democrats are pushing in the opposite direction.

“There’s some Democrats who are now saying, ‘Boy, we need to be careful on levying these new trade barriers and we need to worry about trade wars,’ ” said Slaughter, who served in the George W. Bush White House. “The president and his policies are starting to muddy those waters again.”

A Quinnipiac poll last month found 53% of all Americans disapprove of the president’s handling of trade, while just 39% approve. The poll was taken about a week after talks between the U.S. and China broke down and Trump increased tariffs on some $250 billion worth of imports.

“Right now, China is paying us billions and billions of dollars,” Trump said. “They never gave us 10 cents.”

Never mind that most economists say the tariffs are largely paid by American businesses and consumers. Meanwhile, China has raised tariffs of its own on U.S. exports, while cutting the taxes on products it buys from other countries.

Kudlow calls himself a free trader but said he has come around to the president’s view that tariffs can be a useful economic weapon.

“It’s a negotiating tool, but it’s not a bluff,” Kudlow said. “As you’ve seen, he will actually execute or implement tariffs.”

A member of the audience asked Kudlow what happens if Trump’s tariffs don’t deliver a knockout punch. What if, instead, the two sides settle into a costly, rope-a-dope trade war?

Kudlow didn’t have a ready answer for that. The think tank’s director emeritus, Fred Bergsten, observed that for much of the past century, the U.S. has gone largely unchallenged in the global ring. In China, it is finally facing another economic heavyweight.

Let’s block ads! (Why?)

House and Senate Democrats introduced legislation Tuesday they say will allow victims of gun violence to have their day in court.

The Equal Access to Justice for Victims of Gun Violence Act aims to repeal federal protections blocking firearm and ammunition manufacturers, dealers and trade groups from most civil lawsuits when a firearm is used unlawfully or in a crime.

Those protections date to 2005, with the passage of the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act.

Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., one of the bill’s co-sponsors, said since PLCAA became law, state and federal courts have “dismissed numerous cases against the gun industry,” adding that other cases were likely not brought at all.

Schiff, surrounded by members of gun violence prevention groups including Moms Demand Action, Brady and March For Our Lives, said the purpose of the legislation was to “correct the error Congress made” nearly a decade and a half ago.

“Responsible actors in the gun industry don’t need this limitation on liability. And the irresponsible ones don’t deserve it,” Schiff told reporters at the announcement of the bill.

PLCAA was signed into law by then-President George W. Bush and championed by the gun industry, including the National Rifle Association.

Lawrence Keane of the National Shooting Sports Foundation, a firearms trade association, told NPR his organization “will certainly oppose this legislation.” He called the bill to repeal PLCAA “fundamentally unfair.”

“You would no more charge or blame Ford or General Motors for drunk driving accidents,” Keane said, adding that the current law is “working exactly how Congress intended it.”

Keane and other supporters of the current law say it was passed as a way to ensure that manufacturers, dealers and distributors had protections from what they call “frivolous” lawsuits intended to bankrupt the gun industry.

“All we’re doing through this proposal is giving victims of gun violence their day in court,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., a co-sponsor of the Senate version of the bill. “Every other industry has to pay punitive damages if it intentionally and purposefully violates [a] standard of care” toward the community.

“That will provide a powerful incentive as it has done in tobacco, in automobiles, in pharmaceutical drugs, for safer products,” Blumenthal added.

In March, the Connecticut Supreme Court overturned a lower court decision, ruling that Remington Arms could be sued under state law by the families of victims from the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting.

The court said that Remington, the manufacturer of the rifle that was used in the 2012 attacks in Newtown, Conn., could be sued on the basis of how the company marketed the military-style weapon to civilians.

Blumenthal on Tuesday called it a “narrow victory for the Sandy Hook victims,” adding that it allows families to “go back to the trial court and seek to prove their case. It was by no means a total victory for them.”

The effort to repeal PLCAA by Democrats on Capitol Hill is not new.

Schiff first introduced the measure in 2013, and it has been reintroduced at least two other times without gaining traction.

Democratic lawmakers said momentum is now on their side, pointing to polling that shows 90% of Americans support universal background checks.

Supporters of the new PLCAA repeal also say that the NRA is in a far weaker position now than it was in 2005 because of recent allegations of financial mismanagement; investigations into the group, including one by the attorney general of New York; and inquiries by House Democrats looking into links between NRA officials and individuals with ties to Russia.

As with the Bipartisan Background Checks Act of 2019 and the Enhanced Background Checks Act of 2019, this new bill faces steep odds since the Senate, controlled by Republicans, has shown no appetite for taking up gun control legislation.

“It is a new day in Congress,” said Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, D-Fla., who highlighted that Wednesday is the third anniversary of the mass shooting at Pulse nightclub in Orlando, where 49 people and the shooter died.

“We will not stop, regardless of the Senate majority leader [Mitch McConnell R-Ky.] ignoring the pleas of the American people.”

Let’s block ads! (Why?)